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Friday, March 20, 2015

On Saturday Clark performed in a piano festival. This was his second year competing. He had to memorize two pieces--Prehistoric Processional and Billowing Breakers. We are really proud of his hard work. I enjoyed going to the festival. Clark was glad when it was over.

After we went to a local frozen yogurt shop, Sweet Frog. The kids enjoyed that. Shanna's frozen yogurt tasted really weird. Lee asked about it and one of the workers thought it tasted weird also. They let Shanna pick a different flavor which was nice.

Yesterday afternoon and last night Cal had a recorder concert at school. Lee was able to come to the afternoon performance, which was fun.

It was fun seeing Shanna and Haley and Elden in the hallways.

That evening I came by myself with Cal. Lee finished up dinner with the kids and had some do baths. After the concert we biked to the community center, played for a little while, then enjoyed cookies at home. It was fun going to the concert. Nice work Cal!

Post Christmas...I found some forgotten photos that I want to share. Mindy and Andrew brought Christmas presents over for the kids after we got back from Pennsylvania for New Years.

We all received candy and games! A fun combination!

My parents dropped in sometime in January too. I might have already blogged about this!

Clark's favorite treat is homemade chocolate chip cookies. He likes making them too.

Growing up we would smash our houses on New Year's day. Normally over the holidays we have family visiting or we are visiting other family over New Years. Some point in January Lee took the kids outside and let them shoot their houses with Clark's paintball gun.

Spring is almost here! What I am really excited about though is SUMMER. Ahh...I can't wait for the heat!

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Can you believe my baby is 6??? Crazy! We enjoyed celebrating Elden's birthday over two days. Elden's birthday landed on a Wednesday. Lee works late on Wednesday and I normally have a young women's activity those evenings for church. We decided it would be simpler to have his party a day early. As always, I was up much too late finishing Elden's cake.

This is the image I used to make his cake. I decided to just do his "head" and it still took a long time. This is Zane, a Lego Ninjago character.

I finished at about 3am. Sometimes when I make fondant it turns out nice and smooth. Other times I get little clumps of powdered sugar that won't break down. This batch had TONS of clumps, it was so annoying. Well, now I am a proud owner of a sifter (after Elden's cake was completed I bought one). Hopefully I won't ever have bumpy, lumpy fondant again!

Lee hung the balloons and banners. The kids had fun decorating the paper banner.

After school Elden helped me make his ice cream for his party. We made mint Oreo ice cream. It was sooo good!

I do NOT know what I was thinking, but I poured the ice cream mixture right into the machine. There is a bowl insert that you pour this liquid in. Never pour it in with out the bowl inserted....you will get a mess like this.

I save almost all of the liquid, but had a mess to clean up. Ugh. Now here is the ice cream IN the bowl. The bowl is something you freeze and then pour the mixture into. Since the bowl is frozen it freezes the liquid pretty quickly. In about 30 minutes you have very soft ice cream. Throw it into a container and freeze for a couple more hours and it's ready. So delicious.

Elden's party!

My kids enjoy getting cards from their grandparents on both sides. They love getting the cash!

Opening of the presents. I took these off of Lee's phone...the quality didn't transfer well, but you get the idea.

Cal was really sweet and bought Elden a candy bar.

Shanna and Haley stayed up the night before the party making these cute hats for Elden and a little book. It was so sweet of them. Now to get the receiver to be grateful...

Elden opened his "big" present last. His reaction was so funny. We had it hidden from him, but he and Cal spotted it that afternoon.

All the kids building his Lego titanium dragon. Or maybe Haley is picking out a movie....

On Elden's actual birthday I sat with him at lunch while he ate. He had a fun day at school. He requested popsicles for the treat to share with his class. I found a big bag of those twin popsicles for about $1.80--nice! I was worried though that they would make a sticky mess. Elden's teacher was so glad I didn't send in cupcakes. She said the popsicles were great. I guess I was thinking of a super hot day when they would melt fast....but sadly it's not 90 degrees out yet.

The night of Elden's birthday the kids stayed home except Cal who had Cub Scouts. I actually taught the Mia Maids how to make fondant. I think they really enjoyed it. We set up shop in the nursery and made a huge mess. Thanks Lee for helping a lot with the clean-up!

See my new sifter on the table? I bought it that night before the activity. I didn't want the fondant to be clumpy for the young women. And now in the future I can ensure smooth fondant for myself!

Elden's birthday just kept going! I think he loved it. On Sunday our friends Andrew and Mindy dropped off a bag of presents for him that we found on our steps after church. He received some crayons, fruit snacks, a Bionicle Lego, a really fun card, and a blue fluffy bunny. (There may have been something else....can't remember...)

So, about the blue fluffy bunny. I had been teasing Clark and Cal a lot before Christmas that I would give them a purple fluffy bunny for Christmas as their only present. Well, Elden heard me teasing them, but thought I was serious. I started teasing Elden one day about giving him a fluffy bunny for Christmas and he thought that sounded great! Ha ha. Too funny! I was going to wrap up one of the girls' bunnies to give to him, but forgot. Later I suggested to him that maybe he wanted a blue fluffy bunny for his birthday. Bunnies are easier to come by in March. Well, we didn't get him one (I forgot to tell Lee I think when he was buying Elden's presents.) Mindy texted me asking what Elden wanted for his birthday. I told him that he wanted a blue fluffy bunny. I forgot all about it after that. Elden was so happy to find a blue fluffy bunny with his presents from them! He has been having lots of fun with his Lego dragon and the Bionicle man too. Thanks Mindy and Andrew!

Another fun birthday in the books. We are so thankful Elden was blessed to be with our family and that he is so healthy and well. He has been asking about his twin lately and is hoping that the twin is a boy. I am not sure how that will work in the millennium and resurrection. We hope the twin is a part of our family later, but we'll have to wait and see!

Early on in my pregnancy with Elden I felt something weird on my stomach, basically like a lump. I went in for a special ultrasound and I found out that I had been expecting twins. The one twin didn't develop very far. They showed me parts of the spine and some other features of the baby. I am not sure how far along the baby had developed. I forgot to ask. And then later when I was on bedrest for 5 weeks in the hospital for Elden's pregnancy, I had the exact same doctor again, and completely forgot to ask yet again. Call me weird, but I really wanted twins again. I am sure just for bragging rights, ha ha. It's not very often that people have multiple sets of twins. I felt that I was going to have twins and my desire was granted. But then one day while I was saying my daily prayers to Heavenly Father, I felt like I wasn't having twins anymore. This ultrasound confirmed it. I was very thankful for the promptings of the Spirit, and maybe this sounds cold, but it wasn't hard for me to learn about the twin.

Turns out the weird "lump" I could feel was old scar tissue from my c-section with the girls. After my special ultrasound it seemed like my concerns of the pregnancy should have been gone, but I still felt uneasy. I still felt like something was wrong--yet another blessing of the Holy Ghost, because a huge family change was about to happen. They told me about my placenta not being in the correct place, and that maybe it would move, but that was it. Even after having four kids I had no idea really what they were talking about and didn't know that that was even a problem!

Most of you know the rest of the story. Turns out I had placenta previa and immediately after Elden was born, they whisked him away and performed a hysterectomy on me. The lump of scar tissue proved to be a problem, as the scar tissue had adhered to my abdomen wall. I was loosing blood like crazy and they had to separate the scar tissue from the abdomen before they could do the hysterectomy. I had three blood transfusions during this time. (Thank you blood donors, and modern medical miracles!) Lee couldn't come back in to the operating room--which he was warned about before hand. I didn't see Elden for the first time till the next day in the late morning/early afternoon. Anyway, I've mentioned lots of this before, over and over on my blog. His birthday just brings up memories that I don't think about very often! I wasn't even going to write about any of this!!! Ha ha. Well, there you go.

I might have posted this before, can't remember. But I know I have talked about how I did not get Elden ready for kindergarten. I was pleased to see his assessment in January, compared to the one from September. Elden's teacher says he is such a hard worker and a kind friend to everyone in the class.

More detail than I thought I would delve into! Happy, happy birthday Elden. We love having you in our family. And I love that you still love to snuggle.